It is only during evening hours, particularly in the winter time, that they love to listen to fairy tales and stories; it is regarded as an enjoyment of a still higher and more elevated nature, when a Bakhshi (troubadour) comes forward, and to the accompaniment of his Dütara (a two-stringed instrument) sings a few songs of Köroglu, Aman Mollah, or the national poet, Makhdumkuli, whom they half deify. The latter, regarded as a sort of saint, was a Turkoman of the Göklen tribe; he died about eighty years ago. Makhdumkuli died, as I heard from Kizil Akhond, during the civil wars between the Yomuts and the Göklens--his generous spirit could not endure to contemplate the spectacle of brother struggling in murderous combat with brother, whose wives and children were reciprocally captured and sold to slavery. In his biography, clouded with fable, I found him represented as a wondrous man, who, without going to Bokhara or Khiva, was divinely inspired in all books and all sciences. Once being on horseback, he was surprised by an overpowering sleep; he saw himself, in fancy, transported to Mecca into a circle where the Prophet and the first Khalifs were assembled. With a thrill of reverence and awe he looked round and perceived that Omar, the patron of the Turkomans, was beckoning to him. He approached the latter, who blessed him and struck him a slight blow on the forehead, whereupon he awoke. From that instant the sweetest poesy began to flow from his lips, and his books will long occupy with the Turkomans the first place after the Koran. In other respects the collection {322} of poems by Makhdumkuli is of particular interest: first, as furnishing us with a pure specimen of the Turkoman dialect; secondly, because the method, particularly of that part which relates to precepts as to horse-breeding, arms, and the Alaman, is such as we rarely find in the literature of the Oriental nations.